AWADmail Issue 672

A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Tidbits about Words and Language

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The word shadkhan is one of those many Yiddish words taken directly
from Hebrew, where its classic pronunciation stresses the last syllable:
/shahd-KHAHN/. In Ashkenazi Hebrew and thus in Yiddish, the stress is on
the first syllable and the second vowel in reduced: /SHAHD-khen/.

Playing on the sense of pairing items and joining them together, the word
has come to be used in contemporary Israeli Hebrew as a term for a stapler.

Peretz Rodman, Jerusalem, Israel

From: Jim Tang (mauijt aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--shadchan

Is it more than just a coincidence, a mere twist of linguistic fate,
that a shadchan (SHAHT-khuhn) wedding -- a perfectly respectable brokered
arrangement -- has morphed into the iconic shotgun wedding, matrimony
orchestrated via the Second Amendment?

“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...” the lyric lead-in to the
eponymously titled song in the Broadway hit musical Fiddler on the Roof
is sung by the three proactive, marriageable daughters of the adult lead
characters, Tevye and Golde.

A shadchan named Yente is a key player in this Old World Jewish
shtetl-inspired stage drama. Not a stretch to see Yente, morph into the
Yiddish word for a chronic (generally female) meddler, gossip, or just
plain busy-body; namely, a yenta.

As documented by Erle Stanley Gardner in The Atlantic (and recounted in this
article), gunsel is one of those
terms that Dashiell Hammett popularized (in The Maltese Falcon, in this
case) in an ongoing game with his editors to get offensive slang published
and innocent-but-offensive-sounding terms questioned. Gunsel in Yiddish
was a slur, but Hammett used the fact that it sounded like “gunman” to get
it past the editors. Like shamus,
Hammett’s usage got picked up by other writers and, supposedly, by gangsters
themselves in a case of life imitating art.

Samuel Goldstein, Los Angeles, California

Email of the Week (Brought to you by Old’s Cool -- Father Knows (and deserves the) Best.)

So there aren’t that many words in English that originate from Hebrew. But
one that does, and has gone through an amazingly long and complex
etymological process, is the word cider. And believe it or not, it’s
related to shicker!

The Hebrew word “sheikhar” or שֵׁכָר
is usually translated as “strong drink”,
or in older translations “beer”. (This word can be found, for instance,
in Isaiah 28:7.) It comes from the same three-letter Semitic root as the
origin of shicker, mentioned in the original email as “shakar”, meaning
“drunk” (as in Genesis 9:21.) When the Bible was translated into Greek
in the Septuagint, since this word was of uncertain exact meaning (is it
beer? Fermented apples? Another kind of wine? It’s unclear what alcohol it
refers to), it was directly transliterated into
σίκερα or “sikera”. This
word when translated into the Latin Vulgate translation, was transliterated
directly into the Latin alphabet as “sicera”. (Latin at the time made almost
no use of the letter K, and Greek transliterations of the letter kappa were
spelled with a C). In Old French the C softened from a hard C to a soft C,
and the word evolved into “cisdre”, which took on the more specific meaning
of “strong drink made from apples or pears”. This eventually evolved into
cidre, which was adopted from Old French to English as cider.

That is one of my favorite etymological facts. Not many words can say
they came from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to French to English! It’s a very
impressive etymology.

Did you really wish to define ‘heimisch’ with ‘homely’ and not ‘homey’? To
me ‘homely’ is ‘plain, common in appearance’ as opposed to the meaning you
have given it -- ‘a comfortable atmosphere pertaining to the home.’ In
the given quotation ‘heimisch’ cuisine gives one the sense of simple
home-cooked comfort food in taste and sight.

Benno Stamurs, Arlington, Virginia

In the US, the word homely is used mostly as a synonym for the word
unattractive but it does have senses indicating ‘unpretentious’ or
‘home-like’. At any rate, to avoid confusion we’ve updated the entry
on the website to use the word ‘homey’.
-Anu Garg

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: limericks

In the West they had no shadchan,
No matchmakers, ever, not one.
If a pappy had said,
He wanted daughter to wed,
Then all he needed was a shotgun.

-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

A wicked witch threatened young Hunsel,
along with his sister named Gunsel.
But Gunsel was armed,
so the kids went unharmed--
and the Witch of the Woods had to runsel.

-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

No costume had poor baby boomer,
too newly- employed as a tummler.
Observer, outraged,
called out to the stage,
“Please cover your Fruit of the Looms, sir!”

-Anne Thomas, Sedona, Arizona (antom earthlink.net)

With Yiddish words high on the list
Common words often are missed
If you’d drunk too much liquor
Would I say you were shicker?
No, but I’d say you were pi.ssed.

-Bob Thompson, New Plymouth, New Zealand (bobtee xtra.co.nz)

We ladies most all have the same wish
A man both exciting and heimisch
But diamonds and pearls
Do speak loudly to girls
If he buys them we’ll settle for tame-ish.

-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Puns on the Words of the Week

These two volunteer sites have done so much to preserve the written word
for future generations by converting rapidly deteriorating paper books into
eBook formats. Both of these sites are in constant need of good volunteers
that understand the importance of words. Maybe some of your readers would
be willing to help them out.

Brian John, Pontevedra, Spain

From: Eric Shackle (ericshackle bigpond.com)
Subject: cher and dear

The English word dear and the French word cher are probably unique, in that they both have the same two meanings -- expensive and darling.

Eric Shackle, Sydney, Australia

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound / Much fruit of sense
beneath is rarely found. -Alexander Pope, poet (1688-1744)